Drought shuts Europe's river-cooled nuclear plants, exposing a continental vulnerability

Record-low Danube flows — linked by World Weather Attribution scientists to human-caused climate change — have disrupted nuclear plants in Romania (full Cernavoda shutdown), Hungary (partial Paks shutdown since late July), and France (13 of 57 EDF reactors offline from drought, heat, and jellyfish). All depend on river water for cooling. These sites were built on historical flow assumptions that no longer hold.